Apple begins widespread testing of Mac OS X 10.6.4 Update

Apple on Wednesday issued a broad beta distribution of Mac OS X 10.6.4, the fourth planned maintenance and security update for its Snow Leopard operating system that has been under development internally for several weeks.

The pre-release software, labeled Mac OS X 10.6.4 build 10F37, made its way to Apple Developer Connection (ADC) members just one day after a more elite set of testers belonging to Apple's Apple Seed program got first licks at the beta.

According to people familiar with Wednesday distribution, Apple has asked developers to test four key areas of the system, including graphics drivers, Windows file sharing, USB devices and Voice Over.

Although the build released to ADC members on Wednesday is identical to the one issued to Apple Seed members on Tuesday, an emphasis on evaluating Time Machine backups noted in the Apple Seed distribution was not extended to the ADC version.

It's unclear what specific issues Mac OS X 10.6.4 will target upon its release, as Apple reportedly stopped short of including a list of enhancements with either of the aforementioned distributions.

That said, the updated could arrive sooner than later given that the Mac maker went through 36 builds internally before tapping its developer community to put its weight on the software.

Apple listed only one known issue in documentation accompanying Wednesday's build: that iChat will require a password each time it's launched.

Just fix my wireless SMB file transfer issues. I don't like it when I copy X amount of files and when done, it randomly deletes some of the files I transferred. Wired file transfers work fine.

Apple's smb implementation has always been problematic in one way or another. Try DAVE instead for reliable Windows file sharing. For the life of me I can't figure out why Apple just doesn't buy Thursby Software already and solve this problem once and for all.

For the first time ever I had to revert to a previous upgrade (10.6.2) to prevent my iMac from freezing up. Having upgraded to 10.6.3 it started happening several times a day. There have been a thread or two regarding this on the Apple support forums. I want to go back to blindly trusting all upgrades. Second guessing and checking forums and backing up my entire hard disk before upgrading will seriously complicate my life.

Apple's smb implementation has always been problematic in one way or another. Try DAVE instead for reliable Windows file sharing. For the life of me I can't figure out why Apple just doesn't buy Thursby Software already and solve this problem once and for all.

I second that motion. However, the reason Apple doesn't do that is because they really don't care very much about Enterprise. It's widely known there is one (1) engineer at Apple that works on Active Directory (we even know his name, but unlike Gizmodo I won't name names). That implies there's only one who works on SMB (might even be the same guy). It's cheaper & easier for Apple to keep employing those one/two engineers than buy Thursby.

The problem with Apple and SMB is that the SAMBA project moved their licensing onto GPLv3. I don't think Apple can use the later releases and is stuck modifying an old version. Not sure what the answer is at this point.